


There's a Way and I Know That I Have to Go

by Overnighter



Category: The OC
Genre: Angst, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-30
Updated: 2007-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overnighter/pseuds/Overnighter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the earthquake, Ryan decides to reconcile with Frank and to leave town with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Way and I Know That I Have to Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Famous99](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Famous99).



Sandy felt like he’d been sucker punched. That’s the only way he could remotely describe it. 

Ryan sat on the other side of the wooden patio table, almost invisible in the deepening twilight. The patio furniture was the only thing that had been left behind when they bought this house – their house, once and again – in Berkeley. Everything else was a work in progress.

They’d only been back in Berkeley for two weeks, and it already felt more like home than ever. He had loved this house so much: the one that he and Kirsten had found together on the verge of decay, the one where his son had been conceived, and now his daughter had been born. Everything about it felt right. 

Ryan had spent the day with Kirsten and the designer, picking out furniture for his room and no doubt rolling his eyes, as he had been at dinner, telling them all about it. He pointed out that he had a dorm room waiting for him, twenty blocks away, and that he’d been perfectly happy with the décor in the pool house, but this time, Kirsten had wanted to make sure that he really felt at home. That both her boys did. So he’d spent the day at Fenton MacLaren comparing mica lampshades, just as Seth had on his day with Kirsten the week before. 

Sandy wanted to mock her impulse, but he understood it. This house was a chance for them all to be a new family – a complete family. He wanted to make memories in this house not just with his new daughter, but with his newest son. It was like it had taken the earthquake – the sight of the pool house crushed to rubble on the ground – for them to realize that they’d gotten to a certain point with Ryan, making him part of the family, and then stopped. They were too wary of pushing him too hard, of making him uncomfortable. Well, that was what families did. 

So they’d set about bringing him in fully this time – picking out furniture, and teaching him how to change diapers, and standing beside him at Cal’s orientation as he shyly introduced them as his parents. No one questioned the different last names. In this day and age, who would? 

Ryan looked enough like Kirsten that he assumed most of the other families just thought he was hers, from a first marriage, or an earlier relationship. He would happily have explained to each and every new person there, but Ryan seemed content to leave it at that – and that, although Sandy would never tell him, had delighted Sandy beyond measure. 

And now, this. He didn’t understand. 

“What do you mean, Ryan?” he asked, careful to keep the accusation from his voice, “Explain this to me one more time.” 

It was almost fully dark now, but Sandy could see a flash of his dirty-blond hair as he dropped his head. He wasn’t above believing that Ryan had waited until just now – when it would be too hard to see Ryan’s face, his expressions – to tell him. Talking to Ryan wasn’t so much about talking as it was listening and observing, and right now, Sandy felt not only blind, but dumb. 

“It’s not – it’s not you guys. It’s not,” he repeated, as he had just a few moments before. “It’s just something that I feel like I have to do.” 

Sandy leaned back in his chair and wished desperately for a drink instead of a cup of rapidly-cooling coffee. This was going to be a like picking through a minefield, laid with old sins and past betrayals, about which Sandy had only the briefest awareness. 

“Ryan,” he started. He couldn’t stop repeating his name, as if trying to remind him of who he was now, in this time, at this moment, “I would never try to keep you away from Frank, if that’s what you want, but you don’t owe him a thing.” 

He hadn’t believed it, when Ryan had turned down a stroll to Ici after dinner, with Kirsten and Seth and the baby. It was their new nightly ritual, walking down the hill to the little ice cream parlor, debating what crazy flavors might be on the menu as they waited in the long line. Seth teased him every night for staying behind, but forty minutes in line for basil ice cream seemed extreme. 

He loved to see them all head off, though, arguing about whose turn it was to push the stroller. He watched them from the porch every night, their heads bent together conspiratorially, thrilled at the sight of his little family, before he stole some time alone with the paper and a cup of coffee. He should have realized, the moment Ryan – even more a creature of habit than Seth – said he was “all shopped out” and wanted to stay behind. He should have prepared himself for a serious conversation. 

He sighed, and it must have been loud enough for Ryan to hear, because he saw the flash of hair again as he looked up. 

“I _do_ owe him. I do. I thought you’d see that,” Ryan said, and Sandy could hear the echoes of a thousand other conversations there. Of Ryan, following Theresa to Chino, and Marissa to the ends of the earth, and Seth wherever he led him. Ryan’s whole life was about obligation; Sandy, of all people, should have seen this coming. 

“No, you don’t,” he said firmly and then, more softly, “No, _I_ don’t.” 

He should have been suspicious, when Frank had stayed behind in an old motel near campus after Julie’s aborted wedding. He tried not to read too much into it; he knew that his feelings about Frank Atwood were far from unbiased. He couldn’t even call him Ryan’s father, not even in his own mind. 

He assumed that Frank had needed time to regroup after Julie had turned him down, that he’d needed to figure out his next step after the Bullet had turned him loose. He granted him that, and had bitten his tongue and smiled encouragingly when Ryan started meeting him for breakfast twice a week, when they started running together down by the marina every day. He told himself that it was good for Ryan to see his father trying so hard to connect, to make amends. 

He should have ridden the sneaky son of a bitch out of town on a rail. 

Ryan bent over the table, hands stretched out in front of him almost as if he were beseeching, and Sandy caught a glimpse of his wide-open face. It looked like he was trying not to cry. 

“Sandy, please. It’s only for the summer,” he said, “I – he deserves that.” 

For the summer, for a lifetime, for ten seconds - Francis Xavier Atwood didn’t deserve a moment of time alone with Ryan. Not when he was a kid, with bruises on his face and his arm in a cast, and certainly not now, out of reach, where Sandy couldn’t see him every day, couldn’t protect him. He’d seen the file, the pictures, the detritus of the life that Frank had lived, had subjected his wife and sons to. He’d given up any rights he had the first time he had raised his hand to his own flesh and blood. 

“He doesn’t deserve shit,” Sandy snapped, before he could control himself, and he saw Ryan draw back, shocked by his words and his angry tone. 

He took a deep breath and struggled to calm down. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he apologized, and he saw Ryan lean forward again. 

That impulse, to flinch away at anger, to draw back into himself at the first sign of disapproval – Frank had put that there, and for that Sandy could never forgive him. 

“It’s okay,” he whispered, “I know he’s not your favorite person.” 

“I don’t care about your father,” Sandy said, and while that wasn’t the truth, the next thing was. “I care about you.” He took a chance, brushing aside their cooling coffee and reaching out across the table in the dark. He found one of Ryan’s hands and put his own atop it, squeezing gently. “I want to hear what you have to say. I’m trying to listen. Tell me more.” 

“It’s just for the summer. He knows I’m coming back, to start school. You won’t even be here for some of it. You’ll be taking Seth to school, or back in Newport, packing up the house. In fact, that’s where we wanted to meet you. Dad wants to be back before Julie, you know, has the baby.” 

“And where would you be before that? Your father’s still on probation, you know. He can’t leave the state.” 

“He can. He got permission – the Bullet worked it out. He’s got a project. It’s some sort of oil thing. We’d be traveling – Texas, Louisiana, even to Alaska. And I can help, make a little money. It’s sort of like a road trip, you know?” 

Sandy shook his head, startled.

“Wait, Gordon worked it out? After everything that happened?” he asked. 

Ryan chuckled a little. Sandy could feel the vibrations under his hands. 

“He did. He said all’s fair in love and war. And since neither of them got the girl they should both stick together.” 

Of course he did. Sandy supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that a billionaire who’d still managed to end up in prison didn’t have the smarts to recognize a con man when he saw one. 

“It’s not that long – I’ll call every day, if you want. And we can come back here, in between, if there’s time. Kirsten can send pictures of Sophie every day if she wants. It’ll be like I never left at all.” 

Ryan was talking now, almost a babble for him, trying to fill the silence, and Sandy knew he should let him off the hook, but he couldn’t. Too much was on the line. 

“What about Seth?” he asked. 

Seth was his secret weapon. Ryan would never leave Seth behind, not in their last summer together, their first in Berkeley. 

“Seth’s going back to Newport to spend time with Summer before she leaves. And I’ll see him when we go back – Dad wants to visit Julie, and I want to see Taylor.” 

Sandy seized an opportunity. 

“And what about Taylor – it’s not long before she’s off to France again. Isn’t she upset, or haven’t you told her yet?” 

“Taylor’s the only one I told – until you. She’s not thrilled, but she gets why I want to do this. Why I have to do this.”

Sandy wasn’t stupid enough to think that the last comment wasn’t aimed at him. 

“Then explain it to me, too. Why do you have to do this?” 

Ryan’s hand stirred beneath him as he pulled it back to cross his arms over his chest. 

“I thought you of all people would understand.” 

“Well, I don’t. So try to explain it to me. I’m trying, Ryan, really I am, but all I see is a man who’s manipulating his good-hearted son into doing something he really doesn’t want to do.” 

“I want to do this, Sandy. I know what it means. And I know why I’m doing it. It’s not guilt. I don’t feel sorry for him. It’s – it’s my turn.” 

Ryan’s voice was steady and calm, with a resolve to it that sent Sandy spiraling into panic. He’d heard that voice before, and there was no changing Ryan’s mind. 

“Your turn to what? To keep an eye on him? To waste your last summer before college sleeping with one eye open? What?”

There was a moment of hurt silence, and Sandy almost wanted to kick himself. Almost. He didn’t mind hurting Ryan in the short-term, if he could prevent a worse hurt in the end. 

When Ryan finally answered, his voice was so low that Sandy had to strain to hear. 

“To be you. Don’t you see, Dad’s where I was when I met you – he needs someone to know he can do better. That he can be better. I want to be that for him.” 

Sandy sat back, stunned. Leave it to Ryan to put things as succinctly, and as devastatingly, as possible. 

“Do you think he deserves that? A chance like that? After what he’s done?” he said finally. 

He couldn’t let it go. He’d spent too many nights poring over the Atwood family history. No matter how many happy pictures Trey left behind of Ryan in Little League; no matter how many frayed pictures of tow-headed toddlers Frank kept in his wallet, the pictures Sandy had seen would haunt him forever. 

“Did I? Does anyone? He – I know what he did to me, Sandy, to all of us. I was there,” Ryan said, and it was almost as if he were reading Sandy’s mind. Or as if he’d spent a lifetime learning to read the signals of the many men who wandered in and out of his life. Another sin to lay at the feet of Frank Atwood. 

“I know you know what he did,” Ryan whispered, and Sandy knew what it must have cost him to admit it, “But you don’t know everything. You don’t any of the other stuff. He taught me to throw a curve ball. He brought our reports cards into the garage to show them off. That guy – he’s the one who deserves a chance. And I can give him that.” 

Sandy felt something in his stomach knot. He didn’t want to admit anything about Frank Atwood had ever been good. But the proof sat there, cloaked in gloom across from him. Whatever he thought of Frank and Dawn, they had created the boy – the man – that sat before him. 

“I’m sorry, Ryan. You’re a better man than I could ever be. I don’t think that he deserves it. But he doesn’t need my forgiveness, does he?” 

To his surprise, Ryan reached over and grabbed his hand, still sitting on the table. He couldn’t remember Ryan ever reaching out to him so baldly. He was the king of shoulder bumps and chest pats, touches that could be passed off as accidental. 

“I’m the man I am because of you. I can forgive him because you showed me how. You’re – you’re the best man I know, Sandy. He’s my father, and he deserves a second chance. But he stopped being my dad a long time ago.” 

He stopped, but Sandy heard what he left unsaid. He realized that Ryan had spoken to him alone not only to gauge how the others would react, but to earn his blessing. He felt a rush of emotion. 

“You’ll always have a place here. This will always be your home,” he said, struggling to control his voice, trying to say everything in Ryan’s language. 

“I know,” Ryan whispered. 

“Tell me,” he said, ignoring the lump in his throat, “Tell me more about what you’ll be doing.” 

He hadn’t expected the first memory he made in this new old house to be so bittersweet, but wasn’t that what families were, even in the best of times?

He sat back in his chair, using Ryan’s trick to escape scrutiny, and listened to his son’s deep, sure voice as he wove his plans.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my offering for the OCSFC. 
> 
> Many, many thanks to ctoan for her hard work in organizing this challenge once again, and for wrangling it all together. 
> 
> I wrote for famous99, using the sentence: _After the earthquake, Ryan decides to reconcile with Frank and to leave town with him_.Please forgive me for the liberties that I took with your original sentence. I hope that it's still true to want you wanted. 
> 
> The characters, as always, do not belong to me. This is family-friendly fic, albeit with some mention of traumas past. The title is taken from the Cat Stevens' song Fathers and Sons.
> 
> Thanks to miss_begonia for giving this a quick once-over. Of course, any and all remaining mistakes are mine.


End file.
